It all starts with the big bang; there is no way to avoid the box garden. If you imagine the site as caterpillar-shaped, the pointy head is the entrance and the Buxus parterre of the Bastion are the large, dominating eyes. (Talking of caterpillars, the garden was saved from the threat of the south-east Asian box-tree moth Cydalima perspectalis by the use of Bacillus thuringiensis var Kurstaki, a natural bacterium, not a chemical insecticide.) It was Bertrand Vernet de Marqueyssac who made it possible to grow a garden on this rocky site by building rampart-like walls to support its four main terraces after he acquired the chateau in 1692. Rumour had it that he called in André Le Nôtre to design the gardens but this has been debunked. It was, in fact, a pupil of the great man, a Monsieur Porcher, who worked on the design, basing it on his master’s for the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in a similar setting above the Seine. A new chateau was built by Bertrand’s descendants on the eve of the French Revolution, incorporating part of the older one. This building survived that period of turmoil and was designated a ‘Monument Historique’ in 1948 for its façade and amazing roof, tiled in local limestone flags weighing over five hundred tons, a style known as lauzes. As in all the great houses, each generation adds something, but every now and again someone of real energy and talent comes along and transforms the place. In the case of Marqueyssac, that person was Julien de Cérval (1818-1894).

One of the advantages of writing about gardens is that I am sometimes invited to come and enjoy it out of normal hours. It is such a privilege to be alone in an historic site and my arrival in Marqueyssac in early June, at six thirty in the morning, was extraordinary. It occurred to me that Julien de Cérval would have experienced the fantastic mists that rose from the river, shrouding the garden in a ghostly veil, muting its colours and diffusing the light. Spider webs decorated the topiary like spun bunting and a whole galaxy of tiny snails, their shells swirled with vortex markings in shades of white, pink and brown, studded the space between. Something of this magic, half horror – half enchantment must have inspired him to infuse the site with ideas from the European Romantic style when he inherited Marqueyssac in 1861. Much of him, however, was devoted to Italy and the gardens he had studied there having joined the Legion Romaine in 1849 to defend the Pope’s estates – a group often known as the nineteenth-century Crusaders. The garden demonstrates these two influences, plus Cérval’s passion for, and deep knowledge of, agronomy.

The team of gardeners arrived just before 7 am, dressed smartly in their uniform and each carrying a rucksack containing the tools of their trade, including their dedicated pair of shears which they take home every night to clean and restore to razor-sharp perfection. By 7.30 am feet could be heard crunching on the gravel paths and the tap-tap of hand shears at work began for the day. Julien de Cérval was somewhat obsessed with Buxus and planted tens of thousands of them throughout the estate, some in the parterre, others bordering long walks or forming green tunnels, and some growing freely through informal woodland. The amazing box garden which wows visitors today replaced the old potager of the Bastion area as a ‘terrasse d’agrément’, an ornamental space with serpentine paths passing through beds of undulating box forms, punctuated by the strong verticals of cypress and pines. I can see how walking through this wonderland for the household would have been a distraction from the real world, with constant small changes wrought by the weather, season or time of day keeping the experience fresh.

Mention is often made of the Italian influence here, but it is not the symmetrical, formal Italy of Medici Villas; the feel for me is more of the Romantic Italy of Poussin and Claude Lorraine. Perhaps the informality of the box shapes recalls ancient hedges which time has sculpted – Cérval would have known that the Emperor Augustus had box hedges and topiary in his gardens in Rome around 27BCE. He would also have been aware of the opening in 1867 of the new Parc aux Buttes-Chaumont in Paris with its many sinuous paths, Temple of Sibylle perched atop a cliff fifty meters above an artificial lake, and its relaxed, informal box hedging clipped in waves. Unfortunately, we have no archival evidence to back up any of these theories – Julien didn’t even leave a note of the gardens he particularly admired – however the Bastion Garden with its roiling forms says it all; you are in a place dedicated to the emotions. Scenic vistas, winding paths, bucolic glades, and rustic retreats suitable for solitary contemplation –  Marqueyssac has all the features of a garden created in the late Romantic spirit.

The garden divides quite neatly along the length of the caterpillar shape into two ‘atmospheres’: one which is hot and dry and Mediterranean in character along the south flank which follows the line of the river; and the other is much more humid and temperate. I like to take the path along the hot and dramatic cliff walk, passing the little chapel where members of his family are buried to this day. The chapel had been built by a previous owner but Julien gave it a gothic makeover and dedicated it to, (I am tempted to say himself), Saint Julien, considered the patron saint of lost travellers, ferrymen, innkeepers and circus performers – I wonder which of these appealed most to him. A rustic gate sees you through to the dramatic cliff walk with its overhanging viewing platforms, one of which is the start of an even scarier walk known by the Italian name, Via Ferrata, ‘a mountain route equipped with fixed ladders, cables, and bridges in order to be accessible to climbers and walkers’.

The chalk escarpment is populated with a limited number of species which have made themselves at home here, including Acer campestre, Quercus robur, Quercus ilex and Arbutus unedo, the strawberry tree. The dark leaves of the Holm oak, common in the region around Sarlat, have given the area its name; the ‘Perigord Noir’. Here, they stand out in contrast to the pale rock – conjuring menace and a frisson to add to that of the sheer drop to certain death on the other side of the path. What a gift this topography is to anyone wanting to induce the fear and awe essential to a garden of the emotions. Think Gothik Horror film with the innocent beauty taking this percorso pericoloso to meet her lover by moonlight, with the frightening shadows of dark oaks chasing her, and the mists rising from the river below. Today, discrete Perspex signs ensure you won’t get lost and give a bit of botanic guidance, remarking plants such as Helianthemum vulgare – Rock rose, and education for children about the geology and fauna.

Pathways string ‘event’s together like coloured stones on a necklace. Viewing platforms, sculpture or built structures such as a Cabane en Brande (hut made from heather), the Asile du Poète (poet’s retreat) or the Cabane en Cloche, a wonderfully constructed traditional dry-stone shelter with a bell-shaped roof, are the reinvention of the eighteenth-century practice of creating temples and grottos. Steps and linking corridors encased in arched box connect the dry and dramatic south-facing side to the damper and cooler north. This cooler, more humid micro-climate allowed Cérval to work with a different palette of plants and trees such as Elms, Laburnum anagyyroides, Platanus x hispanica and Cercis siliquastrum. In fact, he cleverly cools the whole design down too, culminating in a four-metre wide, completely flat and straight, (one might say Cartesian), ride, flanked by shady trees and on one side a rock face wall of hewn blocks hosting moss and ferns. Which brings us back to the chateau.

It also brings us to another energetic and exceptional person, the current owner of the site Kléber Rossillon, who had the vision and energy to completely renovate Marqueyssac from its post-war state of total dilapidation to what we see today. It opened to the public in 1997 after a number of years’ work. He is also responsible for Castelnaud, the marvellous medieval chateau-fort (castle), on the other bank of the river. Rossillon’s story is worth a detour on google but it is his design for a modern topiary artwork which we come to at the end of the circuit which I will finish with. Le Chaos is said to have started life when a box of the rectangular sugar cubes popular in France spilled onto the breakfast table. I don’t know how true this story is but I would love it to be. A number of scrubby trees were cleared on the slope behind the chateau, yet more Buxus planted and frames were installed to guide the topiary. Today it is fully grown and an interesting, crisply geometric, juxtaposition to the curves of the old parterre.

As usual, I have left features and aspects of the garden for you to discover but, if you intend to visit, I think this is  garden worth getting up early for, or seeing on one of their candlelit evenings in summer – or indeed at any time of year because this is truly a garden for all seasons, and deservingly listed as a National Historic Monument.

Address: Les Jardins de Marqueyssac, 24220 Vezac, France

Phone: +33 5 53 31 36 36

https://marqueyssac.com/?lang=en

The post The Hanging Gardens of Marqueyssac appeared first on Gardens and Other Stories.

The charming little sea-side town of Étretat is renowned for two things: its stunning coastal scenery, which attracted Impressionist painters, most notably Monet; and the oyster-beds created here at the behest of Marie-Antoinette, famed for her delight in these molluscs. And now there is a third; the garden. I say, The Garden because that really is enough to get you there. Drive to the town and then follow signs up the steep incline to the cliff top. You have to park wherever you can at the side of the road because there is no car park as such, and then walk up a lane, past a few Belle Epoque villas hidden in the trees, to a windy, natural viewing platform with a 1950s chapel and a contemporary art gallery, plus the entrance to the garden of the Villa Roxelana.

It’s a dramatic spot for a garden. The site is fairly narrow and steep with a spectacular view of the sea and one of the three famous chalk arches, the Porte d’Aval. I had seen images but was still rather taken aback by the real thing. Garden magazines had been pressing the point that this is a garden designed on Neo-Futuristic principles which call for the blending of art, technology, ethical values and nature to the benefit of future generations. My first impression was that someone had taken a big, fat, felt pen and drawn swirls and sweeps and parallel lines all over the landscape and then magicked the doodles into topiary. It was amazing and thrilling, claustrophobic, despite its elevated position, mad and, in places, flirting with kitsch. And I think its creator, Russian born landscape architect, Alexandre Grivko, would be quite happy with my reaction because one of his principle aims was to elicit emotion from the visitor. Mine were certainly in a jumble, ranging from irritation with the ‘singing’ trees to rapt admiration for the artistry in the topiary.

Grivko is co-founder and chief architect of the international landscape design company, Il Nature, based in London. Take a look at his portfolio and it is clear that he is deeply influenced by both French and Italian Renaissance and Baroque gardens plus, in certain projects, there is a hint of the Belgian Style, epitomised by Jacques Wirtz, combining structural shrubs and trees with fluid country-style planting. He describes Étretat as his ‘laboratory’ of ideas and best practice which will provide a template for future projects, especially, one suspects, those which have an historical aspect. Indeed, Étretat won the European Garden Award 2019-2020 for ‘Best Development of an Historic Garden or Park’. Grivko knows this part of France well and when he heard the site was for sale he jumped at the chance to work with the splendid view, the environment and with the history of the place.

The house and garden were built around 1905 by a famous Parisian actress, Madame Thébault, friend of Monet and lover of orchids. There was no real ‘historic’ garden here one suspects but Grivko has extended his sensibility to include both the cultural heritage and natural history of the general area. However, as he says himself, one of the advantages of a public garden of your own is that you can really experiment and take risks which you cannot do when working on the private gardens of clients. The site consists of seven named garden areas which flow one into the other in no particular order, allowing the visitor to make their own cocktail of sensory experience, including auditory ones, provided by various art installations like ‘the Clockwork Forest’, where the public can turn a key to start the music. Topiary inspired by the past is married to the fantasy world of Alice in Wonderland in the Jardin d’Aval, and references the local oyster beds on the beach in the Le Jardin d’Émotions where it is partnered with humanoid heads made from polyester resin and aluminium powder by Spanish artist, Samuel Salcedo, (not my cup of tea but people seemed to be loving them). Then there is the Jardin Zen, which may represent the harmonious union of man and nature, but does it through the rather exotic lens of a Buddhist warrior monk. It’s all here – a full-throated mix of Versailles and Alice’s Wonderland.

The Neo-Futuristic label gives me the most pause for thought. Grivko says he has been influenced by the 2007 Neo-Futuristic City Manifesto of Vito di Bari, which calls for urbanists, architects, designers and artists to believe in cities releasing emotions, driven by eco-sustainability, ethical values and the implementation of new materials and technologies, to provide a better quality of life for city dwellers. Think Zaha Hadid and I get it, but it is not so obvious in the context of this garden. It is a conversation I would love to have with the designer. The sculpture situated all over the garden certainly adds another layer of emotion to the design, not always positive I must say, and perhaps the amazing flow of the topiary design has been computer generated, but I am not sure how this garden is ploughing a new furrow. The species he uses to create his amazing sweeps of topiary are really interesting, reviving old favourites like the Georgian superstar, Phillyrea angustifolia, which John Evelyn referred to as, ‘incomparable verdure’, and introducing new possibilities like Elaeagnus x submacrophylla (formerly x ebbingei), a native of Normandy, whose grey leaves reflect the colours of the cliffs and the sea. And fringing the long sweeps of hedging with delicate Muehlenbeckia complexa is inspired. In fact, it will be very useful to observe how the choice of plants to suit this rough and tough costal environment stands up over time. Maybe this is one aspect of the work being done here which fits the future-ready label. Look out for a fuller discussion of this garden in the Hortus Journal later in 2020, but do go and see it if you can as there is much to enjoy and quite a bit which gives pause for thought.

If the garden at Étretat is looking to a brighter future for society based on a set of ideals developed by the creative professions, down the road there is another garden which, in its day, was the product of another group of thinkers and creators who were convinced they too had the recipe for happiness. Les Bois de Moutiers, built on the coast at Varengeville-sur-Mer, is the very first collaboration (and the only one in France) of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens, perhaps the most famous partnership of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Moving on from one garden to the other in a single day makes both visits more interesting and the contrast in emotional response is marked.

Where Étretat is full of edgy drama right from the start as you sidle the car up to the edge of the cliff to park, Les Bois de Moutiers is all gentle bucolic order. Although the grounds here meet the same coast, you don’t get a sense of this as you approach through well-groomed, little country hamlets wrapped in deep green cloaks of hedges and deciduous trees. All is orderly when you arrive, with a symmetrical view through a confident gateway, framing generously planted borders in tasteful shades of pale, which flank a wide walk focussed on the romantic face of the house. There is a spacious and convenient car park, elegantly screened by trees planted on mounds which hint at the romance of an English country holloway. I have to admit that I immediately felt at home in a style of garden whose rules I have absorbed since childhood. The radical vision of the Arts and Crafts Movement grew from a rejection of the Industrial Revolution and was based on a romantic and sentimental vision of a Utopian, rural past, when all were happy in their creative and fulfilling roles within a wholesome community. People should be living a simple but ‘good’ life where everything is either useful of beautiful. Emotion, truth in architecture which reflects the human experience, a desire to make the world a better place through design, these are common ideals which have shaped both the twenty-first century garden at Étretat and Moutiers, its respected elder. Interestingly both embrace an element of fantasy and deliberate dislocation with the real world, in order to express ideas aimed at changing society for the better.

Frenchman, Guillaume Mallet, was thirty-eight when he fell in love with the site at Les Bois de Moutiers. An anglophile from a wealthy banking family, he was deeply affected by his stay on the Isle of Wight as an eleven-year-old boy, where he experienced a gentler way of gardening which embraced nature. As an adult he developed a large circle of artistic, literary and musical friends on both sides of the Channel and was well acquainted with the work of William Morris. He met Edwin Lutyens in 1898 in Paris and, sensing his exceptional abilities, commissioned him to build a house in this beautiful spot. House, garden and park were designed to work in harmony, with Jekyll called in to help Mallet decorate and soften the structure with romantic and billowing planting.

Where Étretat has its Alice in Wonderland theme, encouraging fantasy and flights of the imagination, it is small and hemmed in and has to make a big impression in a short space of time. Moutiers is also considered other-worldly but it has the space to be more subtle about it, and perhaps relies more on our ability to self-generate this spirit. The twelve-hectare site allows the house room to breathe, protected by its little coterie of domestic gardens, set off by an apron of gently sloping lawns, beyond which mixed woodland with planted interventions, all by Mallet, make their way down to the sea. It was experienced as a magical, fairy tale place with ever changing atmosphere depending on the light and the season. The young poet Jean Cocteau visited in 1913 (the date of his friend Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’) with André Gide and wrote:
‘have you forgotten that park?… I’m certain that I went walking there one evening with you. It went right down to the sea… a huge estate, at dusk: the dawn of the night. We couldn’t hear the sea… We were going through, if I remember rightly, four small walled gardens like Italianate cloisters…I count seven steps. We could hear a piano playing.’

Today, the building is quite a surprise; romantic in its fairy-tale features from the front but in a dreary state of disrepair to the rear which rather breaks the spell. The gardens too are unevenly kempt, with the principle courtyards near the house in best repair, but other areas are clearly struggling for care, attention and money. I hope a plan is in place to find the funding needed, not just for vital repairs but to allow for the correct plants to be restored to their rightful place and to let the garden shine again. I would have loved to have the chance to see the interior but this was not possible on my visit – all Arts and Crafts gardens are ideally designed to relate to the principle views from inside the house. House and garden really exist hand in hand.

Walking through the chain of gardens around the house it is a pleasure to pick out features which grew to be typical of a Lutyens-Jekyll garden: crazy paving, rounded ‘landings’, a pergola with stone piers and wooden cross beams, the typical ideal of a progression from formal areas around the house, gradually fading out to meet a completely naturalistic outer belt blending with the wider landscape. The principles of the Arts and Crafts garden have had a profound effect on garden making in Britain ever since, and I believe they still are the single most powerful template for garden designers, informing many of their decisions. The theory of an ideal society based on a kind of pseudo-medieval guild model may be risible t many today, but the desire to live a more harmonious life with nature as an inspiration is still with us – and I think this same desire informs the Neo-Futuristic movement. It is a bond, a common thread which links these two very different gardens and that is why they stand out for me as twin stars, the Castor and Pollux of the Alabaster Coast.

http://etretatgarden.fr/
https://www.boisdesmoutiers.com/
https://www.dieppetourisme.com/

The post Étretat & Moutiers: Twin Stars of the Alabaster Coast appeared first on Gardens and Other Stories.

This summer I was able to visit a few gardens in France which had been on my mind for some time. The Gardens of the Imagination were high on the list, but I wasn’t really expecting to enjoy them as the images looked disappointing and the descriptions somewhat lacking. The element of surprise certainly helped me enjoy the site and so I don’t really want to give a blow by blow description, but rather to take a ramble through the parallel space which accompanies the physical design, that is, the ideas.

People used to just pass through the pretty town of Terrasson-Lavilledieu, on their way to bigger and better things. How could it compete for tourist attention with the celebrated, prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux a few minutes away, or the famously enchanting chateaux of the dramatic Dordogne valley within easy reach?  That was the question the town’s exceptional mayor, Pierre Delmon, asked.  And his answer was – build a garden. Not just any garden, but one with grand cultural ideals at its heart; a visionary garden which would nurture civic pride and become the engine for a whole raft of restoration projects. In 1996 the idea became a reality and Les Jardins de l’Imaginaire was inaugurated; a six-hectare, terraced garden, designed by the renowned Franco-American landscape architect, Kathryn Gustafson.

His idea has worked, people come because of his project and stay to enjoy the pretty town he has been instrumental in beautifying. But don’t come expecting to enjoy a stroll through pretty gardens, maybe take tea, and leave with a few ideas for your own Eden because you will be disappointed. This is not a garden as such, but more of a kinetic evocation of mankind’s relationship with nature and the elements, and the constant engagement we have with the natural world, reflected in the history of garden making. It aims at epic storytelling, a journey through history using your senses and the raw elements of the hillside on which it is written. It’s such a big idea that you may miss the point so you are taken in groups, on a guided tour, climbing slowly up through thirteen tableaux, each expressing a different aspect of garden history, but united in the presence of constant elements such as stone, wood, trees, water and wind. It is a little like a dot-to-dot drawing, in which you need to join up the points indicated to get the full picture. The guide is informative and attractive and, a bit like many modern works of art, the visual object itself probably needs to be supported with words. They do their best and after that it is very much up to you to get it, or not. You are part of the tableaux, the human element, the shifting spirit of the place.

Gustafson has created a contemporary garden to express a timeless truth about our relationship with the natural world. She has been influenced by the ‘biomorphic’ movement which emerged after WWI in which an artwork’s elements became modelled on naturally occurring patterns, biological forms, and shapes. This fluid way of creating art from emotion is reflected in her way of working with slabs of clay in which her hand is directly connected to the emerging forms in the earth. There is intellectual depth to her work which, in this case, has responded to the region’s exceptional qualities, both physical and historical. The Dordogne river basin has been named a UNESCO biosphere and the prehistoric sites and decorated caves of the Vézère Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The land has been scribed both by natural forces such as water and a long saga of human habitation.

As VS Naipaul says in, The Enigma of Arrival, ‘Land is not land alone, something that simply is itself. Land partakes of what we breathe into it, is touched by our moods and our memories.’ This probably has more relevance here than in most conventional garden visits. I booked myself on the first tour of the day, the weather was lovely, the group small and respectful and I had no expectation for the garden to live up to. I really enjoyed the ebb and flow of the tableaux. I was happy to enter into the spirit of the journey and listen to the story. I wonder what I would have thought of it on another day, in different company, or in less pleasant weather. Is it a great garden? Is it a garden at all? I don’t think so, but then, I don’t think that’s the point; I think it takes its own path and is unusual and intriguing, a morphological essay on our love affair with nature – and that’s worth a visit isn’t it?

If you think you may like to visit this place for yourself you may choose not to read the following brief description of the thirteen gardens. Having said that, I am certainly going to revisit, and I can reveal here that there is a plan to extend the gardens and perhaps even allow people to go it alone, and take their time, without any guide save their own imagination.

1. The Sacred Wood – since the beginning of time the woods have been the home of spirits. Here 2,500 box plants cast their spell among the trees, bells and running water.

2. The Green Tunnel – a scented vaulted ceiling of hops, jasmine and wisteria takes you from reality to the world of the imagination.

3. Elemental Gardens – express a balance between wild nature and cultivation. A golden thread in the trees represents the imagination.

4. The Terraces – ruins of old walls covered in moss is a reminder of a time when the region was full of cultivated terraces.

5. The Green Theatre – a link to ancient amphitheatres and to the eternal play between ourselves and nature.

6. Axis of the Winds – giant whirligigs on high posts amplify the presence of the wind.

7. Views – flowers are the key elements in this intervention – always blue and white to reflect the colour of the town and its insignia.

8. The Water Gardens – water in all its artful forms, as seen in gardens through the ages.

9. The Rose Garden – Classically romantic but modern too – the rose is an emblematic flower.

10. Fountains Way – a serpentine path, along the length of the hillside is punctuated by five springs.

11. The Topiary Garden – A classic green garden with man in charge – brings us back to connection with the gardens of the town.

12. The Rivers – The course of the five major rivers of the world is engraved in stones which remind us that the whole planet is also our garden.

13. The Green House – designed by the British architect Ian Ritchie and won the Stephen Lawrence prize in 1999. It is the only covered space in the garden and is used to hold exhibitions.

The Gardens of the Imagination in Terrasson-Lavilledieu, in the Dordogne Department of France, is a public park and contemporary garden, classified by the Committee of Parks and Gardens of the Ministry of Culture as one of the Notable Gardens of France.

Address: Place de Genouillac, 24120 Terrasson-Lavilledieu, France

http://www.jardins-imaginaire.com/en/

https://www.ville-terrasson.com/

http://www.gp-b.com/kathryn-gustafson

The post Les Jardins de l’Imaginaire – Gardens of the Imagination appeared first on Gardens and Other Stories.